Read Online The Other Child by Charlotte Link - Free Book Online Page A

Inspector Almond is looking for people who knew that. Who knew that Amy babysat for Mrs Gardner. She asked me if I knew. I said I did.’
    â€˜You’re hardly a prime suspect.’
    â€˜She wanted to know if I knew other people who knew too.’ She looked at him, waiting for his reply.
    He thought impatiently that she should just say what she was getting at. He hated the way she always beat around the bush.
    â€˜Yes? And?’
    â€˜I didn’t tell her that I thought that you knew.’
    â€˜And why not?’
    There was something sly about how she waited; at least he thought he sensed that. ‘I … didn’t want to make life difficult for you, Dave. It was your evening off. And if you remember, a day later we had a massive fight because you had stood me up and didn’t want to tell me what had happened.’
    Of course not. Should he have told her of the drive to Stainton-dale? And then be obliged to tell him about everything that had followed on from that?
    He forced himself to stay calm, although she was really getting on his nerves. ‘I always had a problem with the way you wanted to control me. Maybe that was a reason why our relationship broke down.’
    â€˜Did you know? That a student used to babysit for Mrs Gardner?’
    â€˜Maybe she did tell me. And? Do you think I was lying in wait for Amy in the park and smashed her head in?’
    Karen shook her head. ‘No.’
    She looked sad and tired. No doubt this was not primarily because of the fate of a fellow student who had only been a fleeting acquaintance, nor because the police were having obvious difficulties in solving the crime. Rather, because her relationship with Dave had gone wrong. He started to feel traces of guilt, which annoyed him. He did not want to feel guilty.
    â€˜So …’ he said.
    She reached for her handbag.
    â€˜So …’ she said too. Her voice sounded hoarse.
    He pulled a face. ‘I’m really sorry about how it’s all turned out. Really I am.’
    Tears started to well up in her eyes again. ‘But why, Dave? I just don’t understand.’
    Because I’m crazy, he thought, because I’m doing something completely crazy. Because it’s finally time for a different life. Because I can only see one way, just this one way , to go.
    He knew that she hated it when he answered in clichés, but he did it anyway.
    â€˜Some things you can’t understand. You just have to accept them.’
    He held the door open for her. A floorboard creaked down in the hall. The landlady, who had been standing at the foot of the stairs the whole time, quickly made herself scarce.
    â€˜I’ll come to the door,’ Dave said.
    She was crying again. He could at least try to treat her politely now, at the end.
    3
    They were catching up over a bottle of mineral water. Innumerable packets of cigarettes lay on the table. Leslie realised once again that she would never get used to some of the contradictions in her grandmother’s character, least of all the fact that Fiona smoked like a chimney – up to sixty cigarettes a day. She seemed completely oblivious to the packets’ warnings, which in ever more drastic words and pictures foretold a painful death for those who enjoyed the pleasures of smoking. And yet she refused to drink a single drop of alcohol, or even to have any in her home.
    â€˜So unhealthy,’ she would always say. ‘It makes you stupid. I’m not going to willingly kill my brain cells!’
    After the long drive up north from London, Leslie would have liked to relax with a couple of glasses of wine, not to mention that at the end of a week which had begun with her divorce on Monday, she would really have liked to numb herself with alcohol. She was peeved because she had forgotten about this eccentricity of Fiona’s, and had not brought a bottle or two with her.
    The two women sat at a little table by the window in the